


For My Dreams (and a Pocketful of Gold)

by AndreyaHalms



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Community: rs-small-gifts, M/M, but it was a wildcard challenge/entry so, gratuitous use of a marvel character as a plot point too, gratuitous use of a puppy as a plot point, ladies who kick ass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 20:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2885993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreyaHalms/pseuds/AndreyaHalms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a masked vigilante/superhero, Remus can safely suppose that yes, he does have a few fans here and there.</p><p>And then there's Sirius.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For My Dreams (and a Pocketful of Gold)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laroseminiut](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=laroseminiut).



> Happy festivities/cultural-term-of-your-choice, all! And a shout out to the mods for such a lovely fest. :)
> 
> Inspired by too much Marvel, as will be evident, and the title is Led Zeppelin lyrics.
> 
> No warnings apply as such, except there's some past drowning that's probably a smidge graphic, but not to worry. The drownee is alive and kicking, but remember, your own health is most important.

**R.**

Remus drags Greyback's feet from underneath him with a rear sweep kick and is half a second away from kicking him, with extreme prejudice might he add, in the throat (not that it would do much; the man's unfortunately - or fortunately - resilient, but still, it'd _feel_ good), when he hears Tonks' slightly breathless, slightly amused voice in his ear.

_'Your groupie's back again.'_

'Wha--' Remus bites out as Greyback grabs that split second of distraction to snarl and leap up to his feet, throwing a punch that catches Remus in the shoulder. Remus uses the torque to spin, shifting from his right foot to his left, and sends his leg slicing through the air in a spinning head kick. His boot solidly connects with Greyback's temple, and Greyback goes down like a slightly rabid sack of bricks. Remus knows this comparison is correct because he has seen Tonks heft sacks of bricks (none of them rabid, thankfully) at villians and other perpetrators of crime on more occasion than one.

'What?' Remus repeats, wiping his brow. He pulls out a pair of reinforced handcuffs that had been specially supplied by the Prewetts and secures Greyback.

_'He just passed me and is headed towards the Monument. About halfway up there, I reckon, judging by the speed at which he was going.'_

Remus looks up at the fluted Doric column of the Monument standing out into the London sky. Bellatrix Lestrange is perched at the top, on the urn, all whipping dark hair and dark clothes, and with his enhanced hearing, he can hear her spit out some of the Bible's more apocalyptic passages.

'Need any help there?' Remus asks, already breaking out into a run.

 _'I'm all right,'_ Tonks says airily over the comm. The end of her sentence is punctuated by a solid thud. _'You go take care of your man, Remus.'_

'He's not my _man_ ,' Remus mutters. Up ahead, there's a new masculine figure in jeans and a dark grey polo shirt holding a camera on the viewing platform of the Monument. The figure cups its hands around its mouth and yells an _Oi_ to Bellatrix, who stops mid-cackle and swoops down from the golden urn and lands on the mesh net surrounding the platform, clinging to it like a particularly goth spider to its web. The figure raises its camera, and as Remus gains ground, he can almost hear the shutter click as the photograph is taken.

 _Here we go again_ , Remus thinks.

The resigned, almost grandfatherly, affection that spreads through him is an odd feeling, but nice.

*

**T.**

If asked, Tonks could, and would, tell you (only if you were Emmeline Vance or Remus Lupin) with astonishing clarity and in vivid detail about how Sirius and her partner started dating.

'It's hardly dating,' Remus would firmly say, adding liberal amounts of grated chocolate into his tea.

'That's exactly what I told Em on our first date, and look where we are now,' Tonks would say cheerfully.

'You were concussed on our first date,' Emmeline would remind her, dropping her badge and sidearm on the table and settling in to the sofa beside Tonks. 'You fell into the gutter outside the restaurant because you were too busy looking at me instead of where you were stepping.'

Remus would quietly avert his eyes while they kissed, and Tonks would quietly notice him doing that.

*

**R.**

One of the things that Remus remembers with absolute certainty is drowning.

He remembers being trapped in a tank and bound, tubes and wires spreading out from his body. He remembers the building pressure in his lungs, the throb in his temples, the weight at the base of his skull. He remembers the overpowering need for fresh oxygen. He remembers the bubbles meandering past his eyes, the too-bitter, too-sweet, viscous, cloying liquid trickling into his mouth, his nasal cavity, soaking through the areolar tissue of his lungs...

He remembers dark, shadowy shapes watching his eyes snap open in terrible panic, his chest heaving as he tried to suck in air, his muscles straining and spasming as he filled himself with more of the sickly yellow-tinged liquid instead.

Remus remembers drowning over and over again. There is not much that remembers from before that about who he is or where he's from (things that can let him know what _attachment_ is like, an ugly voice inside him tells him sometimes), and that is also the reason why he's missing all the experiences related to complex human interaction, but from what he's read and heard about (and from what common sense dictates), a broken deal is not a good foundation for an interaction between two people.

'You might not have noticed, Sirius,' Remus says pleasantly, unbuckling his mask and raking his fingers through his hair to get the circulation going, 'but you've had my attention for quite a while now. Therefore, I'd appreciate it if you would try to stop trying to kill yourself.'

'Mmh,' Sirius says, distracted, looking through the pictures in his camera. He purses his lips and holds the display out towards Remus. 'What do you think?'

Remus looks at the shot of Bellatrix's face, with her dark, hooded eyes and lips curled up in an ugly sneer. Half of it is covered by her blurred sharp-nailed fingers reaching out towards the viewer. Remus remembers that moment as being the one where he had burst into the viewing platform; Bellatrix had peeled the wire mesh aside with the glee and impatience of a child unwrapping its Christmas present and had been reaching for Sirius' face.

'Very candid,' Remus says. 'And it serves to further reinforce my point.'

Sirius switches the camera off and sets it on the table. 'I'm not trying to kill myself to catch your attention, Moony. These photographs allow me eat. I'm just doing my job.'

'Doing it a bit more safely wouldn't hurt you.'

'You're really not one to speak.'

'Well, in my defence, I _am_ slightly immortal.'

'That woman who hangs out with you isn't, but I don't see you telling her anything.'

Remus waves his hand dismissively, setting his mask aside. 'She's more than capable of taking care of herself. And the next time, please refrain from goading people who are capable of killing you.'

'Who, Bellatrix?' Sirius snorts. He hooks his fingers through the loops of Remus' cargo pants and reels him closer, and the wound-up edge in Remus shifts to a lower, more physical sort of hum. 'Nah. She's a crazy bitch, but she won't hurt me.'

'The level of conviction in that statement is only slightly scary.'

Sirius grins. 'We have history,' he says, tracing the bruise on Remus' jaw from when he'd taken a blast from a Death Eater earlier.

Remus feels his brows climb. 'Do I want to know?'

'You do. Hang around for a bit and I'll tell you someday. It's a story of Shakespearean proportions, and you won't be disappointed.' Sirius presses the bruise. 'Do you need ice on that?'

Remus moves closer to Sirius so that they are flushed together, his thigh between Sirius'. They've been doing this - whatever _this_ is - for a little over ten weeks, and it's one of the things they do, a game of sorts that they play. Sirius does something reckless, Remus stops him from doing something reckless, and then they crowd against each other and see who's going to give in to their adrenaline rush first.

'It's all right,' Remus says, and his lips tingle as they brush against Sirius'. 'I'll live to see another day.'

Remus is glad of the fact that he doesn't have to put a explicit label to their thing because a label brings with it pressure to fall into certain roles and fulfill expectations. They're not together, and they're not not-together. There is flexibility to try out new things and make new arrangements, and more importantly, he is in control of his part of _them_.

(Sometimes, Remus wonders if things will remain the same if Sirius comes to know about his violent nightmares and disassociative episodes. There's a difference between the thrill of occasionally getting off with someone who appears in the news every now and then and actually getting to know the person under the persona. Remus also wonders how he _himself_ will react if or when Sirius wants to stop wanting to meet up with him.

But then Sirius goes ahead and says something surprisingly insightful that makes him question everything he thought was right so flippantly, in a way so open and _unaffectedly_ normal that Remus realises that there is no point in worrying about what is to come because they have not put any labels on each other yet.)

'Ah, the perks of being a slightly immortal lab experiment.'

'You say the nicest things,' Remus says sagely, sliding his hands over Sirius' denim-covered hips and tucking them into his back pocket, feeling the curve of his arse, and how Sirius pushes back into his palms.

'Check out your Tumblr tag sometime. Lab experiment is your most widely accepted origin story, what with all the shit Greyback and his people keep monologuing about around you.'

'Would you mind terribly if I bent you over this table instead?'

Sirius licks his lips and the grin on his face can only be described as lascivious. 'If you're not too curious about about what people have to say about you.'

'Hey, whoa,' a startled female, American voice interrupts from behind Remus, and both he and Sirius jump, their noses bumping awkwardly. 'Keep it out of the public areas, gentlemen.'

Remus looks over his shoulder to see the pretty, dark-haired girl, probably a few years younger than him, who managed to sneak up on him despite his heightened senses standing in the doorway. There's a bow in her hand and a quiverful of arrows strapped to her back, and she's dressed in an alarming yet classy amount of purple, with purple-tinted shades perched on the top of her head.

'Kate,' Sirius groans, dropping his forehead to Remus' other shoulder. 'I thought you'd left.'

'My flight got cancelled because a bunch of weirdos were blowing things up all over the city,' Kate says. She arches an eyebrow at Remus and adds, 'I decided I'd help, but things were already resolved by the time I got there.'

Sirius lifts his head and Remus takes a step backwards, putting a hopefully respectable distance between them. 

'Right,' Sirius says briskly. 'So. Katherine Bishop, Moony. Moony, Katherine Bishop, a family friend, of sorts. She does what you do, but in New York and with bows and arrows.'

'Is your name really Moony?' Kate asks curiously.

'Don't judge him, he's hell bent on protecting his identity,' Sirius replies, while Remus simultaneously says, 'He gave it to me.'

'Huh,' Kate says, and looks Remus from head to toe and back up and Remus smiles pleasantly at her when their eyes meet. 'I expected him to be built more like Wolverine, to be honest. Well, carry on. I'll just, uh, do what I do. While wearing my headphones. And playing some really loud music' And with that, she crosses the foyer, bow tucked under an arm and wheeling a large (purple) piece of luggage behind her, and disappears into one of the doors.

'So,' Remus breaks the silence. 'Who's Wolverine?'

'A mutant. American. Terrible personality, from what I've heard.'

'You seem to know a fair number of people from my line of work.'

'Eh,' Sirius says, waving his hand. 'Kickers of the _derrière_ are cool,' he drags Remus back to him so that they're closer, but not really touching. 'And _you_ , darling, are the coolest of them all.'

'You know, I always wonder _why_ you keep saying that.'

Sirius laughs. 'Do you really not know, or do you just need me to inflate your ego? Because if that's the case, give me some time and I can come up with some really flattering words.'

Remus snorts. 'Do I look look like someone who wants to have their ego inflated, Black?'

'No,' Sirius says quietly after a beat, as if he's just seen Remus in a new light. He frowns. 'No, you don't. Do you even know why I've been so persistent with you?'

'I...assumed it was because you wanted to-- how honest do you want me to be, here?'

'I want nothing _but_ honesty, Moony.'

'Well,' Remus says carefully. 'I assumed it was because you wanted to, er, fuck?'

Sirius looks pointedly at where Remus' fingers are wrapped around Sirius' wrist, his thumb stroking the thin skin. 'This isn't fucking.'

Remus drops the loose grip, snatching his hand back as if burnt.

'Why did you do that?' Sirius asks. The easy, comfortable mood from earlier is gone, replaced by something else. Something heavier, and Remus hesitates, suddenly acutely aware of the freedom of every exit, the definition in every strand of muscle in Sirius' grey irises, the distinct susurrus of every inhale and exhale in the room.

'Don't screw with me, Sirius.'

'I'm not,' Sirius says evenly. 'You were honest with me and I asked you an honest question back.'

 _Maybe you didn't want it_ is the first thing that flits through Remus' mind, but Sirius had _quite_ clearly been enjoying it before Remus had to go ahead and open his mouth. Fuck.

A muscle ticks in his jaw. 'I don't know.'

'Yeah,' Sirius says. 'Yeah, I thought so.' He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. 'The reason why I think you're the coolest of them all and why I'd been so persistent with you is because you go out there and put your slightly immortal life on the line for people you have no obligation to. For people who refuse to accept how bloody wonderful you are because you're not a part of some government institution like the police or whatever. I'm not pretending that I know your life or your origin story or whatever-you-call-it, but I'll bet everything I have that you could have kept your head down and lead a nice and peaceful life if you wanted to. No, instead, you go out and do good for the sole reason that you _want_ to make things better for everyone.'

Remus shrugs. 'A lot of people do that.'

'No they don't. Take that bloke in leather, for example. I talked to him once and he sounded very bitter about humanity in general.'

Remus blinks. 'Who?'

'Your colleague with the fetish BDSM gear who skulks around wearing the puppy play muzzle thing. The Christian-Bale's-Batman wannabe?'

Remus can't help but laugh at that surprisingly apt description. His laugh is short and rings out, and manages to diffuse the tension. 'He's not that bad. And I'll tell him you said that.'

'If he hasn't heard it before, everything about forty-two is true,' Sirius mutters under his breath, which sets Remus off again.

'Listen, you stupid man,' Sirius says with a smile, steadying Remus. 'What my point is that you're a good person. You deserve to be appreciated. And I appreciate you, and I enjoy your company. That's all.'

And maybe that is all. Maybe it is as simple as that (even when it is not, even when he sometimes has dreams where his enemies follow him back to Sirius.)

'You should probably know by now,' Remus says. 'My name,' the one the plaque under his tank had displayed, 'is Remus.'

Remus has the satisfaction of watching Sirius' eyes widen as surprise flits through them, before they're filled with mirth.

'No,' he says. 'No way. Please tell me you're joking.'

'I really am not,' Remus assures him. 'This was the name that was given to me.'

'What the fuck, this is _precious_.'

'My last name is even better.'

'Is it Wolffe? McWolf? Is your family Scottish?'

'No, no,' Remus grins. 'And no.' He takes a leap of faith, loosens his grip on control. 'Hang around for a bit, and I'll tell you what it is someday.'

*

**T.**

So this is how they'd met:

'Hey,' Sirius had called out. He'd been sitting beside James at the back of a paramedic van, both of them sharing a neon-orange shock blanket. 'Werewolf.'

Remus had kept his schooled his features to one of polite pleasantness. He wasn't overly fond of the name the papers and social media had given his tac-suit wearing, partially masked alter-ego ( _The Werewolf_ , they called him, complete with the article), but the only reason he had a roof over his head and shoes on his feet and a nice, warm meal in his stomach was because of the donations of the people of London (and sometimes other parts of England).

'Yes?'

'Great job back there, man,' James had said. His glasses had been missing a lens.

'Thank you.'

'No, thank _you_ ,'James had insisted. 'I'd offer you my first born--'

Remus had blinked.

'That's my fucking godchild, you twat,' Sirius had protested.

'-but I don't have one yet,' James had finished.

'Don't listen to him,' Sirius had said. 'He's in shock,' James had weakly flapped his corner of the blanket at that, 'and we just got a text from his wife before the blast saying that she's preggers, so he's delirious anyway.'

'I see,' Remus had said awkwardly. 'Er, do you want me to contact any-'

'Ah, no, no,' Sirius had said, waving his hand dismissively, and even though Tonks was, as they put it, _hella gay_ , she was woman enough to admit that Sirius, with his smooth features and dark hair and grey eyes, was an aesthetic masterpiece even while covered in blood, grime, sweat and shock blanket. 'It's all fine. I'm Sirius Black, by the way, and you, my friend, are an extremely fit bloke. I'd like to shag you at least once. I mean, I'd obviously like to do it repeatedly, but there's a reason why you keep half your face covered in black and gold, and I assume you wouldn't want me to compromise your identity or whatever.'

Once, in the early days, when he had still been testing the physical limits of his body, Remus had miscalculated a jump, clotheslined on an actual clothesline and had crashed through the windows of an Iraqi family during dinner. The expression that had been on his face as he stood in the kitchen, which had been mirrored by the family of four, had been the same as what he'd given Sirius then.

'That's extremely thoughtful of you, Mr. Black,' Remus had finally replied.

'Sirius, please.'

'I'll keep that in mi--'

'Oh, and this here is James. He also answers to honey, dear and love, but that's irrelevant. You, me, nearest flat surface at a time and place of your choice. What say you?'

'Is he always like this?' Remus had asked James after another lengthy pause.

'He's usually smoother at these things,' James had replied. 'But he's a bigger fan and a good man. Beautiful bollocks, that rhymes.'

'I have been vetted,' Sirius had said. 'Best give in.'

'He'll do reckless things to grab your attention if you don't,' James had added.

'Ah, the trials of being a celebrity,' Remus had said drily (which in no way had been an invitation, as Remus would always stress), and Sirius had grinned, sharp and with too many teeth, and nobody had ever directed that particular combination of expressions in that way at Remus before.

Tonks would always pinpoint that moment, the moment where Remus' mouth had twitched upwards in the ghost of the ghost of a challenging smirk as the moment Sirius and her partner started dating.

*

**S.**

The thing is, Sirius has never fallen in love.

He doesn't think it's because he's a misanthrope or that he cannot love; he's had extremely satisfying short-term relationships with people, and there's nothing - _nothing_ \- he would not do for James, Lily, Harry and Peter. But he has heard songs, read books, watched movies and observed couples enough to know that the love that the world celebrates, the love that the world commercialises, is not what he feels for the people he cares about. For him, sex had always been about getting off. He'd never been particularly possessive of his partners, and he had never felt the need to go above and beyond his duty and do things for them that he wouldn't have done for any other decent human being, the same way he'd never felt the need to shag James or listen to Peter's breathing even out as he fell asleep.

It had worried him for a long time, this inability of his to merge the emotional intimacy of friendship with the physical intimacy of sex, but then he'd met Remus.

Sirius stares at Remus, who's standing dripping on Sirius' porch with an odd expression on his face Behind him, the silent whip of lightning cracks across the sky, and the low rumble of thunder crescends over the steady white static of rain before fading away.

Sirius stares, and Remus cracks a small smile.

'Well?' Remus says. He's carrying his jacket in a bundle in his arms. 'Aren't you going to invite me in?'

The delighted bark of laughter that escapes him snaps Sirus out of his daze, and he grabs Remus' upper arm, pulling him in.

'You never come over without a heads-up,' he says, still grinning. 'I was understandably suspicious. Your lectures on self-preservation do sink in sometimes, Remus.'

'Good to know,' Remus says neutrally, but his lips twitch and the corners of his eyes are crinkled in that delicious way that makes Sirius want to press his thumbs over and across them.

'Come on in,' Sirius says, sliding his hand down to Remus' elbow and squeezing it briefly before letting go. 'I'll get you a change of clothes.'

'You like dogs, don't you?' Remus asks abruptly.

Sirius shuts the door and latches it. 'Yeah, why?' At Remus' guilty look, he narrows his eyes and adds, 'Moony. Did you run over a stray?'

'No! What? How am I-- Of course not! Why would you think that?'

'Well, _you're_ the one who turned up looking like your sins need absolution.'

The bundle of wet jacket in Remus' arms chooses that moment to twitch and emit a small, pitiful whine, and Remus makes a low, soothing noise in the back of his throat.

A slow grin spreads across Sirius' face. 'Oh my God. Remus, did you get _me_ a dog?'

'In a matter of speaking,' Remus says with a wince.

'Hang on, I'll get you both something warm and dry. The fire's on inside.'

Eight minutes later, Sirius walks into the living room, armed with towels, tea (with a splash of whiskey and spiced apple cider because Remus has eclectic tastes when it comes to drinking boiled leaves) and a flat bowl of steamed shredded chicken for the dog. Remus looks up when he enters, and Sirius sees a small pup barely the size of his hand curled up on Remus' lap, its tail tucked under its body. The slow, liquid burn that spreads through him at the sight makes him feel like he's just drunk half a bottle of the world's richest wine, and it's a heady, giddy feeling. He drops one of the towels on Remus' head and settles down beside him on the carpeted hardwood floor, setting the tea and chicken between them.

Remus plucks the towel off his head as Sirius picks the puppy up in much the same way he picks four-month-old Harry up, and rubs one of the smaller towels across its body. The puppy squirms and a tremor runs through the jut of its spine.

'He was abandoned,' Remus begins, drying his hair. 'I found him in a box off Knockturn Alley. There were two others, both of them dead because of the cold or starvation or both, I don't know. I buried the others, and I couldn't leave him behind.'

'I wouldn't have expected you to, either.'

Remus exhales and picks up the cup, holding it between his hands. 'He deserves a place to stay. The flat where I live, I share it with two other people - Tonks and her girlfriend. It doesn't have the space for a pet to grow up.'

'You don't have to sell it to me, Remus. I'm not a complete dick.' Sirius brings the puppy up so that they're eye to eye, his hands spanning the whole girth and then some of its body. It looks back at him, its chocolate eyes large and unblinking, and sneezes, startling laughs out of both Remus and Sirius.

'Got a case of the sniffles, have you, little doggie?' Remus asks with a smile. He scratches the puppy behind its ears. 'Don't you worry, Sirius here will take good care of you.'

'Excuse me?' Sirius exclaims. ' _Sirius_ here will take good care of you? I am outraged. What are you here for, decoration? We have joint custody of this thing-- don't we, Snuffles?' He punctuates the last bit with a kiss to the newly-named Snuffles' forehead.

'Snuffles,' Remus says flatly. 'That's a _terrible_ name.'

'Fuck you, Lupin,' Sirius sets the newly-christened Snuffles down, who wobbles a bit on his tiny paws and then unsteadily pads to the bowl of chicken. 'It's a beautiful name. It's that or Bathsheba.'

'Don't swear in front of our child,' Remus says, knocking his ankle against Sirius'. 'Also,' he adds, 'Incidentally, I met you for the first time little more than a year ago.'

'And our child is your idea of a convenient anniversary gift?'

'Not really.'

'Not really?'

'I mean, if it makes you happy, then I suppose yes, it is.'

'I knew it!' Sirius crows, laughing. 'You're a fucking sap.'

Remus shrugs unrepentantly and leans his shoulder against Sirius' with a content smile. 'Pot, kettle, Black.'

Sirius has never fallen in love, but then there's Remus. There are lots of things he wants to do with Remus, he wants to do _for_ Remus. He wants to ask Remus to stay with him the night without leaving the next morning just after breakfast. He wants to lie in the yard on sunny days and trace out funny-looking shapes in clouds with a bottle of cold beer and the man he's shared the most satisfactory orgasms with, and he wants to debate on the correct thermostat settings on cold winter nights with him. He wants to take everything Remus has to give, and give him everything he will take, he wants to spend hours simply existing beside him.

It's stupid, it's irrational, and he dreads the inevitable jokes and horrible puns James would make about the situation, but Sirius Black wants Remus Lupin to move in with him.

But before that, there are things that Sirius needs to tell Remus, about himself and his family, and he knows that Remus, who's so caught up in hating what he is and who he is that he has a tendency to push people away if paid too much attention, has his own obstacles and demons to overcome.

But there's no need to hurry, and they seem to be going to a good place the way they are now anyway. 

So Sirius straddles Remus, unbuttons his damp shirt and kisses his silly, silly smile instead.

**Author's Note:**

> Not what I started off to write as laroseminuit's gift, but this thing practically wrote itself, and it was fun watching it write itself. Her preferences were rather interesting and it spawned a lot of ideas for this fic that I couldn't possibly fit in, so there'll probably be another one that'll tie off some of the loose ends in here. Also, in my head, Kate and Sirius met at some high society gala, and hit it off from there. Lots of hours were spent dramatically complaining about the Black and Bishop families.
> 
> Excited babbling aside, I refuse to thank N for the beta because she ate my Nutella and _there are sacred rules in hostel one must not break, goddammit._


End file.
